Concussions - Inevitable?

Every week, generally on Wednesday nights I play in a roller hockey league.  Last week I took a pretty nasty fall, when someone from the other team clipped my skate as I was skating backwards.  Taken totally off guard I fell backwards and my head hit the ground pretty hard.  Even though I have a brand new state-of-the-art helmet that most manufacturers these days promote as "concussion-proof" I have been suffering from pretty bad whip-lash and mild concussion symptoms in the last week.  This is not new to me as I played very competitive hockey growing up and have suffered concussions before.

If you are a hockey fan and follow the NHL fairly closely as I do you may have noticed that concussions are becoming more and more of a problem.  If though the NHL has tried to implement new rules that help differ the chances of concussions the trend in the number of them has continued to increase.  The other day as I was checking NHL.com for the scores from the night I noticed a FAQ interview with Gary Bettman, the commissioner an Dr. Reuben Echemendia, the head of the NHL/NHLPA Concussion Working Group, about the trend in concussions.  The interview can be found at the following link: http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=551900#&navid=nhl-search

The interview touches on the policies that the NHL has regarding concussions, as well as the technology involved in preventing them.  The latter is what caught my attention.  With my interest in sporting equipment and materials engineering I was somewhat perplexed as to how there has yet to be a great development in concussion preventing protective gear.  The interview touched on this subject.  In order to prevent a concussion a helmet must be able to absorb a significant amount of energy produced during a blow to the head.  Unfortunately with the current technology, for this to be possible helmets would have to be much bulkier and heavier making them much too uncomfortable and awkward to play in.  The intention of today's helmets, which are comprised of a hard, polycarbonate shell, is to transfer the energy.  The reason for this is to prevent more serious injuries such as depressed skull fractures and lacerations.  Although concussions can be very persistent causing players to miss a month or two, such as Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins, or even the rest of the season, such Marc Savard of the Boston Bruins, they are not perceived as an extremely dangerous injury.  It is also a common belief that a mouthguard is successful prevention to concussions.  Echemendia argues that although mouthguards are very important dental and jaw protection, there has been no evidence that they are efficient in the protection against concussions.

It is obvious to me that concussions are becoming much more frequent in the sporting world.  This could perhaps just be because they are becoming much better at diagnosing them.  I do believe, however, that this is becoming a serious problem and I would expect to see a lot more research and development in the future geared towards protecting athletes from concussions.

Sean